On the eve of
Philip Agee's 20-city tour to campuses and community groups throughout
the U.S. the Nicaraguan foreign ministry revoked his Nicaraguan passport
preventing him from traveling freely. Jean Caiani of Speak Out!, who
organized his tour, is helping coordinate a national campaign to regain
his original passport which was revoked since 1979 on the grounds that
Agee's writing and speaking pose "a serious threat to the national
security of the United States." Following is the speech that Agee
planned to give at his scheduled engagement.

PHILIP
AGEE: Sooner or later it had to happen: the fundamental transformation
of U.S. military forces was really only a matter of time.
Transformation, in this sense, from a national defense force to an
international mercenary army for hire. With a U.S. national debt of $3
trillion, some $800 billion owned by foreigners, the United States
sooner or later would have to find, or produce, the proper crisis - one
that would enable the president to hire out the armed forces, like a
national export, in order to avoid conversion of the economy from
military to civilian purposes. Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, encouraged, it
seems, by the Bush administration, is the necessary crisis.

Not
long after the invasion, I watched on Spanish television Bush's call to
arms, when he said "our way of life" is at stake. For days afterwards I
kept watching and reading for news of the tens of millions of people in
this country, who would take to the streets in joy, in celebration that
their days of poverty, homelessness, illiteracy and uncared for illness
might soon end. What I saw instead, like most of you, was the Bush "way
of life" fishing, boating, and golfing on the coast of Maine like any
respectable member of the eastern elite. Bush's military machismo of
recent weeks reminded me of what General Noriega said about Bush a
couple of years ago, before Bush decided to smash Panamanian nationalism
for the foreseeable future. You remember? Noriega told his deputy in the
Panamanian Defense Forces, who later made it public, he said, "I've got
George Bush by the balls."

When I
read that, I thought, how interesting one of those rare statements that
contain two revelations. Back in the 1970s, when he was director of the
CIA, Bush tried to get a criminal indictment against me for revelations
I was making about CIA operations and personnel. But he couldn't get it,
I discovered later in documents I received under the Freedom of
Information Act. The reason was that in the early 1970s the CIA had
committed crimes against me while I was in Europe writing my first book.
If they indicted and persecuted me, I would learn the details of those
crimes, whatever they were: conspiracy to assassination, kidnapping, a
drug plant. So they couldn't indict because the CIA under Bush, and
before him under William Colby, said the details had to stay secret. So
what did Bush do? He prevailed on President Ford to send Henry
Kissinger, then Secretary of State, to Britain where I was living, to
get them to take action. A few weeks after Kissinger's secret trip a
Cambridge policeman arrived at my door with a deportation notice. After
living in Britain nearly five years, I had suddenly become a threat to
security of the realm. During the next two years I was not only expelled
from Britain, but also from France, Holland, West Germany, and Italy all
under U.S. pressure. For two years I didn't know where I was living, and
my two sons, then teenagers, attended four different schools in four
different countries.

The
latest is the government's attempt to prevent me from speaking in the
U.S. now. Where this will end, we still don't know.

How
many of you have friends or relatives right now in Saudi Arabia or the
Persian Gulf area? I wonder how they feel, so close to giving their
lives to protect a feudal kingdom where women are stoned to death for
adultery, where a thief is punished by having his hand amputated, where
women can't drive cars or swim in the same pool as men? Where bibles are
forbidden and no religion save Islam is allowed? Where Amnesty
International reports that torture is routine, and that last year 111
people were executed, 16 of them political prisoners, all but one by
public beheading. And not by clean cut, with a guillotine, but with that
long curved sword that witnesses say required various chops. Not that
Saudi Arabia, or Kuwait before the invasion, are any different in terms
of political repression than any number of U.S.-supported allies. But to
give your life for those corrupt, cruel, family dictatorships? Bush says
we're "stopping aggression." If that were true, the first thing U.S.
forces would have done after landing, they would have dethroned the Gulf
emirs, sheiks, and kings, who every day are carrying out the worst
aggression against their own people, especially women. Mainstream media
haven't quite said it yet, as far as I know, but the evidence is
mounting that George Bush and his entourage wanted the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait, encouraged it, and then refused to prevent it when they could
have. I'll get back to Bush later, but first, a quick review of what
brought on this crisis. Does the name Cox bring anything special to
mind? Sir Percy Cox?

In a
historical sense this is the man responsible for today's Gulf crisis.
Sir Percy Cox was the British High Commissioner in Baghdad after World
War I who in 1922 drew the lines in the sand establishing for the first
time national borders between Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.
And in each of these new states the British helped set up and
consolidate ruling monarchies through which British banks, commercial
firms, and petroleum companies could obtain monopolies. Kuwait, however,
had for centuries belonged to the Basra province of the Ottoman Empire.
Iraq and the Iraqis never recognized Sir Percy's borders. He had drawn
those lines, as historians have confirmed, in order deliberately to
deprive Iraq of a viable seaport on the Persian Gulf. The British wanted
no threat from Iraq to their dominance of the Gulf where they had
converted no less than ten sheikdoms, including Kuwait, into colonies.
The divide-and-rule principle, so well-practised in this country since
the beginning. In 1958 the British-installed monarchy in Iraq was
overthrown in a military coup. Three years later, in 1961, Britain
granted independence to Kuwait, and the Iraqi military government massed
troops on the Kuwaiti border threatening to take the territory by force.
Immediately the British dispatched troops, and Iraq backed down, still
refusing to recognize the border. Similar Iraqi threats occurred in 1973
and 1976.

This
history, Saddam Hussein's justification for annexing Kuwait, is in the
books for anyone to see. But weeks went by as I waited and wondered why
the International Herald Tribune, which publishes major articles from
the Washington Post, New York Times and wire services, failed to carry
the background. Finally, a month after the invasion, the Herald Tribune
carried a Washington Post article on the historical context written by
Glenn Frankel. I've yet to find this history in Time or Newsweek. Time,
in fact, went so far as to say that Iraq's claims to Kuwait were
"without any historical basis." Hardly surprising, since giving exposure
to the Iraqi side might weaken the campaign to Hitlerize Saddam Hussein.
Also absent from current accounts is the CIA's role in the early 1970s
to foment and support armed Kurdish rebellion in Iraq. The Agency, in
league with the Shah of Iran, provided $16 million in arms and other
supplies to the Kurds, leading to Iraqi capitulation to the Shah in 1975
over control of the Shat al Arab. This is the estuary of the Tigris and
Euphrates, that separates the two countries inland from the Gulf and is
Iraq's only access to Basra, its upriver port. Five years later, in
1980, Iraq invaded Iran to redress the CIA-assisted humiliation of 1975,
and to regain control of the estuary, beginning the eight year war that
cost a million lives.

Apart
from Iraq's historical claims on Kuwait and its need for access to the
sea, two related disputes came to a head just before the invasion. First
was the price of oil. OPEC had set the price at $18 per barrel in 1986,
together with production quotas to maintain that price. But Kuwait and
the United Arab Emirates had long exceeded their quotas, driving the
price down to around $13 in June. Iraq, saddled with a $70 billion debt
from the war with Iran, was losing billions of dollars in oil revenues
which normally account for 95% of its exports. Meanwhile, industrialized
oil consumers like the United States were enjoying the best price in 40
years, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Iraq's other claim against Kuwait
was theft. While Iraq was occupied with Iran during the war, Kuwait
began pumping from Iraq's vast Rumaila field that dips into the disputed
border area. Iraq demanded payment for oil taken from this field as well
as forgiveness of Kuwaiti loans to Iraq during the war with Iran. Then
in July, Iraq massed troops on the Kuwaiti border while OPEC ministers
met in Geneva. That pressure brought Kuwait and the Emirates to agree to
honor quotas and OPEC set a new target price of $21, although Iraq had
insisted on $25 per barrel. After that Hussein increased his troops on
the border from 30,000 to 100,000. On August 1, Kuwaiti and Iraqi
negotiators, meeting in Saudi Arabia, failed to reach agreement over the
loans, oil thefts, and access to the sea for Iraq. The next thing Iraq
invaded. Revelations since then, together with a review of events prior
to the invasion, strongly suggest that U.S. policy was to encourage
Hussein to invade and, when invasion was imminent, to do nothing to
discourage him. Consider the following.

During
the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, the U.S. sided with Iraq and continued
this policy right up to August 2, the day of the invasion. In April, the
Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, John Kelly, testified
before Congress that the United States had no commitment to defend
Kuwait. On July 25, with Iraqi troops massed on the Kuwait border, the
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, met with Hussein. Minutes of the
meeting were given by the Iraqis to the Washington Post in
mid-August.

According to these minutes, which have not been disputed by the
State Department, the Ambassador told Hussein that Secretary of State
James Baker had instructed her to emphasize to Hussein that the U.S. has
"no opinion" on Iraqi-Kuwait border disputes. She then asked him, in
light of Iraqi troop movements, what his intentions were with respect to
Kuwait. Hussein replied that Kuwait's actions amounted to "an economic
war" and "military action against us." He said he hoped for a peaceful
solution, but if not, he said, "it will be natural that Iraq will not
accept death..." A clearer statement of his intentions would be hard to
imagine, and hardly a promise not to invade. The Ambassador gave no
warning from Baker or Bush that the U.S. would oppose an Iraqi takeover
of Kuwait. On the contrary she said, "I have a direct instruction from
the President to seek better relations with Iraq." On the same day
Assistant Secretary of State Kelly killed a planned Voice of America
broadcast that would have warned Iraq that the U.S. was "strongly
committed" to the defense of its friends in the Gulf, which included, of
course, Kuwait. During the week between the Ambassador's meeting with
Hussein and the invasion, the Bush administration forbade any warning to
Hussein against invasion, or to the thousands of people who might become
hostages. The Ambassador returned to Washington as previously scheduled
for consultations. Assistant Secretary Kelly, two days before the
invasion, again testified publicly before Congress to the effect that
the U.S. had no commitment to defend Kuwait. And, according to press
reports and Senator Boren, who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee,
the CIA had predicted the invasion some four days before it
happened.

Put
these events together, and add the total absence of any public or
private warning by Bush to Hussein not to invade, together with no U.S.
effort to create international opposition while there was time. Assuming
the U.S. was not indifferent to an invasion, one has to ask whether Bush
administration policy was in effect to encourage Hussein to create a
world crisis. After all, Iraq had chemical weapons and had already used
them against Iran and against Kurds inside Iraq. He was known to be
within two to five years of possessing nuclear weapons. He had
completely upset the power balance in the Middle East by creating an
army one million strong. He aspired to leadership of the Arab world
against Israel, and he threatened all the so-called moderate, i.e.,
feudal regimes, not just Kuwait. And with Kuwait's oil he would control
20% of the world's reserves, a concentration in radical nationalist
hands that would be equal, perhaps to the Soviet Union, Iraq's main arms
supplier. Saddam Hussein, then, was the perfect subject to allow enough
rein to create a crisis, and he was even more perfect for post-invasion
media demonization, a la Qaddafi, Ortega, and Noriega.

Why
would Bush seek a world crisis? The first suggestion came, for me at
least, when he uttered those words about "our way of life" being at
stake. They brought to mind Harry Truman's speech in 1950 that broke
Congressional resistance to Cold War militarism and began 40 years of
Pentagon dominance of the U.S. economy. It's worth recalling Truman's
speech because Bush is trying to use the Gulf crisis, as Truman used the
Korean War, to justify what some call military Keynesianism as a
solution for U.S. economic problems. This is, using enormous military
expenditures to prevent or rectify economic slumps and depressions,
while reducing as much as possible spending on civilian and social
programs. Exactly what Reagan and Bush did, for example, in the early
and mid-1980s.

In
1950 the Truman administration adopted a program to vastly expand the
U.S. and West European military services under a National Security
Council document called NSC-68. This document was Top Secret for 25
years and, by error, it was released in 1975 and published. The purpose
of military expansion under NSC-68 was to reverse the economic slide
that began with the end of World War II wherein during five years the
U.S. GNP had declined 209S and unemployment had risen from 700,000 to
4.7 million. U.S. exports, despite the subsidy program known as the
Marshall Plan, were inadequate to sustain the economy, and
remilitarization of Westem Europe would allow transfer of dollars, under
so-called defense support grants, that would in turn generate European
imports from the U.S. As NSC-68 put the situation in early
1950:

"the
United States and other free nations will within a period of a few
years at most experience a decline in economic activity of serious
proportions unless more positive governmental programs are developed
..."

The
solution adopted was expansion of the military. But support in Congress
and the public at large was lacking for a variety of reasons, not least
the increased taxes the programs would require. So Truman's State
Department, under Dean Acheson, set out to sell the so-called Communist
Threat as justification, through a fear campaign in the media that would
create a permanent war atmosphere. But a domestic media campaign was not
enough. A real crisis was needed, and it came in Korea. Joyce and
Gabriel Kolko, in their history of the 1945-55 period, The Limits of
Power, show that the Truman administration manipulated this crisis to
overcome resistance to military build-up and a review of those events
shows striking parallels to the Persian Gulf crisis of 1990. Korea at
the end of World War II had been divided north-south along the 38th
parallel by the U.S. and the Soviets. But years of on-again, off-again
conflict continued: first between revolutionary forces in the south and
U.S. occupation forces, then between the respective states established
first by the U.S. in the south and then by the Soviets in the north.
Both states threatened to reunify the country by force, and border
incursions with heavy fighting by military forces were common. In June
1950, communist North Korean military forces moved across the border
toward Seoul, the South Korean capital At the time, the North Korean
move was called "naked aggression," but I.F. Stone made a convincing
case, in his Hidden History of the Korean War, that the invasion was
provoked by South Korea and Taiwan, another U.S. client
regime.

For a
month South Korean forces retreated practically without fighting, in
effect inviting the North Koreans to follow them south. Meanwhile Truman
rushed in U.S. military forces under a United Nations command, and he
made a dramatic appeal to Congress for an additional $10 billion beyond
requirements for Korea, for U.S. and European military expansion.
Congress refused. Truman then made a fateful decision. In September
1950, about three months after the conflict began, U.S., South Korean,
and token forces from other countries, under the United Nations banner,
began to push back the North Koreans. Within three weeks the North
Koreans had been pushed north to the border, the 38th parallel, in
defeat. That would have been the end of the matter, at least the
military action, if the U.S. had accepted a Soviet UN resolution for a
cease-fire and UN-supervised country-wide elections.

Truman, however, needed to prolong the crisis in order to
overcome congressional and public resistance to his plans for U.S. and
European rearmament. Although the UN resolution under which U.S. forces
were fighting called only for "repelling" aggression from the north,
Truman had another plan. In early October U.S. and South Korean forces
crossed the 38th parallel heading north, and rapidly advanced toward the
Yalu River, North Korea's border with China where only the year before
the communists had defeated the U.S.-backed Kuomintang regime. The
Chinese communist government threatened to intervene, but Truman had
decided to overthrow the communist government in North Korea and unite
the country under the anti-Communist South Korean dictatorship. As
predicted, the Chinese entered the war in November and forced the U.S.
and its allies to retreat once again southward. The following month,
with the media full of stories and pictures of American soldiers
retreating through snow and ice before hordes of advancing Chinese
troops, Truman went on national radio, declared a state of national
emergency, and said what Bush's remarks about "our way of life" at state
recalled. Truman mustered all the hype and emotion he could, and said:
"Our homes, our nation, all the things that we believe in, are in great
danger. This danger has been created by the rulers of the Soviet Union."
He also called again for massive increases in military spending for U.S.
and European forces, apart from needs in Korea.

Of
course, there was no threat of war with the Soviet Union at all. Truman
attributed the Korean situation to the Russians in order to create
emotional hysteria, a false threat, and to get the leverage over
Congress needed for approval of the huge amounts of money that Congress
had refused. As we know, Truman's deceit worked. Congress went along in
its so-called bi-partisan spirit, like the sheep in the same offices
today. The U.S. military budget more than tripled from $13 billion in
1950 to $44 billion in 1952, while U.S. military forces doubled to 3.6
million. The Korean War continued for three more years, after it could
have ended, with the final casualty count in the millions, including
34,000 U.S. dead and more than 100,000 wounded. But in the United
States, Korea made the permanent war economy a reality, and we have
lived with it for 40 years.

What
are the parallels with the current Gulf crisis? First, Korea in June
1950 was already a crisis of borders and unification demands simply
waiting for escalation. Second, less than six months before the war
began Secretary of State Dean Acheson publicly placed South Korea
outside the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia, just as Assistant Secretary
Kelly denied any U.S. defense commitment to Kuwait. Third, the U.S.
obtained quick UN justification for a massive military intervention, but
only for repelling the North Koreans, not for conquest of that country.
Similarly, the UN resolutions call for defense of Saudi Arabia, not for
military conquest of Iraq contrary to the war mongers who daily suggest
that the U.S.may be "forced" to attack Iraq, presumably without UN
sanction or declaration of war by Congress. Fourth, both crises came at
a time of U.S. economic weakness with a recession or even worse downturn
threatening ahead. Fifth, and we will probably see this with the Gulf,
the Korean crisis was deliberately prolonged in order to establish
military expenditures as the motor of the U.S. economy. Proceeding in
the same manner now would be an adjustment to allow continuation of what
began in 1950. NSC-68 required a significant expansion of CIA operations
around the world in order to fight the secret political Cold War a war
against socialist economic programs against communist parties, against
left social democrats, against neutralism, against disarmament, against
relaxation of tensions, and against the peace offensive then being waged
by the Soviet Union.

In
Western Europe, through a vast network of political action and
propaganda operations, the CIA was called upon to create in the public
mind, the specters of imminent Soviet invasion combined with the
intention of the European left to enslave the population under Soviet
dominion. By 1953, as a result of NSC-68, the CIA had major covert
action programs underway in 48 countries, consisting of propaganda,
paramilitary, and political action operations such as buying elections
and subsidizing political parties. The bureaucracy grew accordingly: in
mid-1949 the covert action arm of the CIA had about 300 employees and
seven overseas field stations. Three years later there were 2,800
employees and 47 field stations. In the same period the covert action
budget grew from $4.7 million to $82 million.

By the
mid-1950s the name for the "enemy" was no longer just the Soviet Union.
The wider concept of "International Communism" better expressed the
global view of secret conspiracies run from Moscow to undermine the U.S.
and its allies. One previously secret document from 1955 outlines the
CIA's tasks:

Create and exploit problems for International
Communism.

Discredit International Communism and reduce the
strength of its parties and organization.

Reduce International Communist control over any area of
the world ... specifically such operations shall include any covert
activities related to:

subversion against hostile states or groups, including
assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and
refugee liberation groups, support of indigenous and anti-Communist
elements in threatened countries of the free world

deception plans and all compatible activities
necessary to accomplish the foregoing

Another document on CIA operations said, in extracts: Hitherto
accepted norms of human conduct do not apply ... long-standing American
concepts of fair play must be reconsidered ... we must learn to subvert,
sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated and
more effective methods than those used against us. It may become
necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand,
and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy.

And
so, from the late 1940s until the mid-1950s, the CIA organized sabotage
and propaganda operations against every country of Eastern Europe,
including the Soviet Union. They tried to foment rebellion and to hinder
those countries' effort to rebuild from the devastation of World War II.
Though unsuccessful against the Soviet Union, these operations had some
successes in other countries, notably East Germany. This was the easiest
target because, as one former CIA officer wrote, before the wall went up
in 1961 all an infiltrator needed was good documents and a railway
ticket.

From
about 1949, the CIA organized sabotage operations against targets in
East Germany in order to slow reconstruction and economic recovery. The
purpose was to create a high contrast between West Germany, then
receiving billions of U.S. dollars for reconstruction, and the "other
Germany" under Soviet control. William Blum, in his excellent history of
the CIA, lists an astonishing range of destruction: "through explosive,
arson, short circuiting, and other methods, they damaged power stations,
shipyards, a dam, canals, docks, public buildings, petrol stations,
shops, outdoor stands, a radio station, public transportation ...
derailed freight trains ... blew up road and railway bridges ... used
special acid to damage vital factory machinery ... killed 7,000 cows ...
added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools," and much,
much more. These activities were worldwide, and not only directed
against Soviet-supported governments.

During
40 years, as the east-west military standoff stabilized, the CIA was a
principal weapon in waging the north-south dimension of the Cold War. It
did so through operations intended to destroy nationalist, reformist,
and liberation movements of the so-called Third World, through political
repression (torture and death squads), and by the overthrow of
democratically elected civilian governments, replacing them with
military dictatorships. The Agency also organized paramilitary forces to
overthrow governments, with the contra operation in Nicaragua only a
recent example. This north-south dimension of the Cold War was over
control of natural resources, labor, and markets and it continues today,
as always. Anyone who thinks the Cold War has ended should think again:
the east-west dimension may have ended with the collapse of communism in
Eastern Europe, but the north-south dimension, which is where the
fighting really took place, as in Vietnam, is still on. The current
Persian Gulf crisis is the latest episode, and it provides the Bush
administration with the pretext to institutionalize the north-south
dimension under the euphemism of a "new international order," as he
calls it. The means will be a continuation of U.S. militarism within the
context, if they are successful, of a new multilateral, international
framework. Already James Baker has been testing the winds with proposals
for a NATO-style alliance in the Gulf, an idea that William Safire aptly
dubbed GULFO.

The
goal in seeking and obtaining the current crisis stops short, I believe,
of a shooting war. After all, a war with Iraq will not be a matter of
days or even weeks. Public opinion in the U.S. will turn against Bush if
young Americans in large numbers start coming back in body bags. And
Gulf petroleum facilities are likely to be destroyed in the process of
saving them, a catastrophe for the world economy. Nevertheless, press
accounts describe how the CIA and U.S. Special Forces are organizing and
arming guerrillas, said to be Kuwaitis, for attacking Iraqi forces.
These operations provide the capability for just the right provocation,
an act that would cause Hussein to order defensive action that would
then justify an all-out attack. Such provocations have been staged in
the past. In 1964, CIA paramilitary forces working in tandem with the
U.S. Navy provoked the Tonkin Gulf incidents, according to historians
who now question whether the incidents, said to be North Vietnam attacks
on U.S. ships, even happened. But Lyndon Johnson used the events as
pretext to begin bombing North Vietnam and to get a blank check
resolution from Congress to send combat troops and escalate the war. I
think the purpose is not a shooting war but a crisis that can be
maintained as long as possible, far after the Iraqi-Kuwait problem is
resolved. This will prolong the international threat (remember Truman in
1950) and allow Bush to prevent cuts in the military budget, to avoid
any peace dividend, and prevent conversion of the economy to peaceful,
human-oriented purposes. After all, when you count all U.S.
defense-related expenses, they add up to more than double the official
figure of 26% of the national budget for defense; some experts say
two-thirds of the budget goes for defense in one way or
another.

The
so-called national security state of the past 40 years has meant
enormous riches, and power, for those who are in the game. It has also
meant population control - control of the people of this and many other
countries. Bush and his team, and those they represent, will do whatever
is necessary to keep the game going. Elitist control of the U.S. rests
on this game. If anyone doubts this, recall that from the very beginning
of this crisis, projections were coming out on costs, implying that
Desert, Shield would last for more than a year, perhaps that large U.S.
forces would stay permanently in the Gulf. Just imagine the joy this
crisis has brought to U.S. military industries that only months ago were
quaking over their survival in a post-Cold War world. Not six weeks
passed after the Iraqi invasion before the Pentagon proposed the largest
arms sale in history: $21 billion worth of hardware for defense of the
Saudi Arabian throne. Very clever when you do the sums. With an increase
in price of $15 per barrel, which had already happened, Saudi Arabia
stands to earn more than $40 billion extra dollars during the 14 months
from the invasion to the end of the next U.S. fiscal year. Pentagon
calculations of Desert Shield costs come to $18 billion for the same 14
months. Even if the Saudis paid all of that, which they won't because of
other contributors, they would have more than $20 billion in windfall
income left over. O.K., bring that money to the States through weapon
sales. That, I suppose is why the Saudi arms sale instantly became known
as the Defense Industry Relief Act of 1990.

As for
the price of oil, everyone knows that when it gets above $25-30 a barrel
it becomes counter-productive for the Saudis and the Husseins and other
producers. Alternative energy sources become attractive and conservation
again becomes fashionable. Saddam Hussein accepted $21 in July, and even
if, with control of Kuwait, he had been able to get the price up to $25,
that would have been manageable for the United States and other
industrial economies. Instead, because of this crisis, it's gone over
$35 and even up to $40, threatening now to provoke a world depression.
With talk of peaceful solutions, like Bush's speech to the UN General
Assembly, they will coax the price down, but not before Bush and others
in the oil industry add to their already considerable
fortunes.

Ah,
but the issue, we're told, is not the price of oil, or preservation of
the feudal Gulf regimes. It's principle. Naked aggression cannot be
allowed, and no one can profit from it. This is why young American lives
may be sacrificed. Same as Truman said in 1950, to justify dying for
what was then, and for many years afterwards, one of the world's
nastiest police states. When I read that Bush was putting out that line,
I nearly choked.

When
George Bush attacks Saddam Hussein for "naked aggression," he must think
the world has no knowledge of United States history no memory at all.
One thing we should never forget is that a nation's foreign policy is a
product of its domestic system. We should look to our domestic system
for the reasons why Bush and his entourage need this crisis to prevent
dismantling the national security state.

First
we know that the domestic system in this country is in crisis, and that
throughout history foreign crises have been manufactured, provoked, and
used to divert attention from domestic troubles a way of rallying people
around the flag in support of the government of the day. How convenient
now for deflecting attention from the S&L scandal, for example, to
be paid for not by the crooks but by ordinary, honest people.

Second, we know that the system is not fair, that about one in
three people are economically deprived, either in absolute poverty or so
close that they have no relief from want. We also know that one-in-three
Americans are illiterate, either totally or to the degree that they
cannot function in a society based on the written word. We also know
that one-in-three Americans does not register to vote, and of those who
register 2/3rds don't vote. This means we elect a president with about
25% or slightly less of the potential votes. The reason why people don't
vote are complex, but not the least of them is that people know their
vote doesn't count.

Third,
we know that during the past ten years these domestic problems have
gotten even worse thanks to the Reagan-Bush policy of transferring
wealth from the middle and poor classes to the wealthy, while cutting
back on social programs. Add to this the usual litany of crises:
education, health care, environment, racism, women's rights, homophobia,
the infrastructure, productivity, research, and inability to compete in
the international marketplace, and you get a nation not only in crisis,
but in decline as well. In a certain sense that might not be so bad, if
it stimulates, as in the Soviet Union, public debate on the reasons. But
the picture suggests that continuation of foreign threats and crises is
a good way to avoid fundamental reappraisal of the domestic system,
starting where such a debate ought to start, with the rules of the game
as laid down in the constitution.

What
can we do? Lots. On the Gulf Crisis, it's getting out the information on
what's behind it, and organizing people to act against this intervention
and possible war. Through many existing organizations, such as Pledge of
Resistance, there must be a way to develop opposition that will make
itself heard and seen on the streets of cities across the country. We
should pressure Congress and the media for answers to the old question:
During that week between Ambassador Glaspie's meeting with Hussein,
"What did George know and when did he know it, and why didn't he act
publicly and privately to stop the invasion before it happened?" In
getting the answer to this question, we should show how the mainstream
media, in failing to so do, have performed their usual cheerleading role
as the government's information ministry.

The
point on the information side is to show the truth, reject the
hypocrisy, and raise the domestic political cost to Bush and every
political robot who has gone along with him. At every point along the
way we must not be intimidated by those voices that will surely say:
"You are helping that brute Saddam Hussein." We are not helping Hussein,
although some may be. Rather, we are fighting against a senseless,
destructive war based on greed and racism. We are for a peaceful,
negotiated, diplomatic solution that could include resolution of other
territorial disputes in the region.

We are
against militarist intervention and against a crisis that will allow
continuing militarism in the United States. We are for conversion of the
U.S. and indeed the world economy to peaceful, people-oriented purposes.
In the long run, we reject one-party elitist government, and we demand a
new constitution, real democracy, with popular participation in
decision-making. In short, we want our own glasnost and restructuring
here in the United States. If popular movements can bring it to the
Soviet Union, that monolithic tyranny, why can't we here in the United
States?